Madrade Middlemiss found herself on a CTrain one recent night sitting near a woman who was visibly drunk and repeatedly calling a group of Middle Eastern men terrorists.

“Hey,” the woman shouted at the men, clearly frustrated they would not respond to the slurs, “talk to me.”

The tense confrontation frightened Middlemiss, who rides the train every day but had never felt threatened before. Worried the tensions could escalate, she attempted to bring calm to the train car by striking up a conversation with the woman, who eventually cooled down.

“I felt scared,” said Middlemiss, who was with a friend heading northeast during the episode, which happened a few weeks ago at about 10 p.m. She said she’d never ride the train at night again. And she is not alone.

One in five Calgary transit users do not feel safe boarding CTrains after 6 p.m., according to the most recent survey data. Reports of obnoxiously loud or intoxicated riders, including those who were verbally threatening, are among the top complaints, though there are a handful of accounts of physical assault, theft and public drinking.

The Manning Foundation for Democratic Education is poised to release a report Wednesday on public safety in Calgary, highlighting CTrain safety as an area of concern.

“The system itself is actually very safe,” said Brian Whitelaw, Calgary Transit’s co-ordinator of public safety and enforcement. “But, certainly, we hear from a lot of people that ask if we can do something about, particularly in the evenings, people who might be intoxicated and loud and generally scare people.”

Roughly 99 per cent of survey respondents told Calgary Transit’s pollsters last year they felt safe riding the CTrain during daylight hours. After 6 p.m., that number drops to 78 per cent. Still, it’s an improvement over previous years, especially 2008, when only 55 per cent of those polled said they felt safe riding trains at night.

Dean Fraser, who takes the CTrain four days a week to work, said he hasn’t seen or experienced any threatening confrontations during his commute, even on his ride home at night.

“I’ve been amazed. I hear about other people having problems but I haven’t had any problems so far,” he said, crossing his fingers as he laughed. “But it could happen at any time. You never know.”

Calgary Transit has not yet released its July report on public safety and enforcement, but based on figures over the past five years it estimates its peace officers will deal with 143 unwanted patrons during the month, not just on trains.

They will also likely be confronted with 38 intoxicated riders, about 29 disturbances and 26 assaults, robberies and sex crimes in July, transit officials estimate.

Still, Calgary Transit reports that assaults, sex crimes and robberies on its buses, trains and other properties have been on the decline since 2011.

According to the 2012 survey, more than one-third of respondents, most of whom were women, said that on at least one occasion they had avoided boarding trains and buses during evening hours, according to the survey.

“The concerns they identify are the types of issues where a person is trapped on a train with somebody who demonstrates anti-social behaviour and is generally very scary,” Whitelaw said. “They are the types of incidents that get collapsed into a statistic, but they really convey what I think people are telling us in terms of how safe they feel after 6 p.m.”

Tanya Anderson, who takes the CTrain every day to get to work, said she has never felt threatened, but she has witnessed agitated riders hurling insults at unsuspecting commuters because of their weight or the way they look.

Anderson said she would not likely board a train after 10 p.m. because “the weirdies come out at night.” She said Calgary Transit should step up enforcement to keep people at ease, having typically seen peace officers on trains and platforms “maybe once a month.”

“I’ve seen stuff going on during the day, so I think there needs to be more (patrols),” she said. “It’s drunken stuff and various people that harass other people, and I think it needs to stop.”

Whitelaw said Calgary Transit spent $6 million over two years upgrading its security and surveillance systems, and has doubled the number of peace officers over the past five years, pushing staff levels up to 89 officials.

While every bus is equipped with on-board surveillance cameras, only a third of the CTrain fleet has them, though riders on every train can connect with transit operators via an intercom system by hitting a help button.

Whitelaw said transit officials are constantly looking at new strategies to make commuters feel safer, but he said it’s unlikely all commuters will feel at ease riding at night.

“You can apply a bunch of tactics and strategies around that,” he said, “but if you’re sitting on a train at 11 o’clock at night and there’s one really drunk person singing, you’re going to feel uncomfortable.”

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